The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam / Melissa Dell, Nathaniel Lane, Pablo Querubin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dell, Melissa.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lane, Nathaniel.

Querubin, Pablo.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23208.

NBER working paper series no. w23208

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

This study examines how the historical state conditions long-run development, using Vietnam as a laboratory. Northern Vietnam (Dai Viet) was ruled by a strong centralized state in which the village was the fundamental administrative unit. Southern Vietnam was a peripheral tributary of the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire, which followed a patron-client model with weaker, more personalized power relations and no village intermediation. Using a regression discontinuity design across the Dai Viet-Khmer boundary, the study shows that areas historically under a strong state have higher living standards today and better economic outcomes over the past 150 years. Rich historical data document that in villages with a strong historical state, citizens have been better able to organize for public goods and redistribution through civil society and local government. This suggests that the strong historical state crowded in village-level collective action and that these norms persisted long after the original state disappeared.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2017.